The Wealth of Nations

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving. ~ Russell Green

I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. ~ Pablo Picasso

This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-more’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base. ~ George W. Bush

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. ~ G. K. Chesterton

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. ~ Confucius

Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor, at least no one worth speaking of. ~ Douglas Adams

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be. ~ Rita Rudner

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise – like moderately rich and just moody? ~ Princess Diana

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. ~ Mark Twain

You often ask me, Priscus, what sort of person I should be, if I were to become suddenly rich and powerful. Who can determine what would be his future conduct? Tell me, if you were to become a lion, what sort of a lion would you be? ~ Marcus Valerius Martial, Epigrams (bk. XII, ep. 92)

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes. ~ Will Durant

The only truly new ideas [the right] has come up with in the last twenty years are (1) supply side economics, which is a way of redistributing the wealth upward toward those who already have more than they know what to do with, and (2) creationism, which is a parallel idea for redistributing ignorance out from its fundamentalist strongholds to those who know more than they need to. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people … turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government … Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. ~ Alexander Hamilton

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. ~ John Maynard Keynes

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. ~ Abraham Lincoln (disputed)

Though I am grateful for the blessings of wealth, it hasn’t changed who I am. My feet are still on the ground. I’m just wearing better shoes. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. ~ Rex Stout

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. ~ Andrew Carnegie, Gospel of Wealth

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose? ~ Don Marquis

Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

It ain’t so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich. ~ Josh Billings

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs. ~ Edmund Burke

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it. ~ Dorothy Parker

If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars. ~ J. Paul Getty

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. ~ Gore Vidal

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